Hanoi is Shut - Well it was for us!

Hi All,

You'll appreciate the title of this post more later...

I know it's been a while since the last post - a recurring theme these days - nevertheless, I'll take you on a whistlestop tour of what we've done over the past few weeks.

From the beach resort of Nha Trang, we went north on the overnight bus

12 hours cramped in a tiny seat that was supposed to be a bed stopping every few hours for the drivers to take on more 'cargo' to the ancient city/town of Hoi An. Hell for me but Caroline loved it and felt like she was on a travelling sleepover!

Hoi An is like stepping back in time to olden Vietnamese times, lovely old buildings and an ornate bridge to prove it:

It is famous for its tailor made clothing, where, in about 12 hours, you can have all manner of things made to measure. It is also where the Top Gear presenters got their ridiculous outfits on the TG Vietnam special. We spent 3 nights in Hoi An and despite our best efforts to avoid buying too much - had suits/skirts/dresses/shoes/shirts/ties made..... and then also had to buy a bag to put it all in! We are now not the lightest travelling backpackers you have ever seen!!

We also visited the My son temples, which, though not as impressive as Angkor Wat, were still well worth the effort.

From Hoi An, we traveled 5 hours north (130KM - see what I mean about the buses?!?!) to the city of Hue, which used to be the capital of Vietnam. Here we looked round some of the old rulers' tombs, and also the old city. These too had sustained a heavy battering during the war, but were still very interesting:

In Hue, we also found an Indian curry house. It was exactly the same as back home. In every aspect. I'll leave it at that! ;)

From Hue, we took a 12 hour train north to Hanoi - the nation's capitol.

To say that we got off on the wrong foot with Hanoi, is something of an understatement.

We arrived in the dark and the rain at 5am on a platform, somewhere near the centre of the city. We knew where we wanted to stay as we had looked it up in the Bible (or Lonely Planet as it's also known), therefore when a taxi driver came up and we told him where we were going and asked the price and he said "I have a metered taxi" we were in raptures. However, 2 minutes later, when the meter was spinning like the Tasmanian Devil and we were randomly driven in the opposite direction in which we wanted to go, our optimism started to wane.

After a frank discussion with the driver, which involved me opening the door and demanding him to stop, he agreed to take us to the hotel for a fixed fee of 30,000 dong ($2 - still too much but we were tired).

He arrived at blatantly the wrong hotel and had just called his mate and told him we were coming so to open up so he could get a commission! ARRRGGGHHH!!!

On seeing this we got out and refused to pay, so the driver and his friend tried to kidnap our bags. Having released the bags, and my hand from the boot, I threw 20,000 dong at him for petrol and we stormed off into the dark leaving them standing there swearing at us.

From there we had to try to find a hotel in the dark using only the rather inadequate map from the Lonely Planet which not only had streets missing, but also incorrectly named.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the Hanoi-ans, as well as being criminals, are also lazy, as there was not a hotel for under $100 per night (10x our budget!) where we could wake the night porter/receptionist. We did find a couple of rooms, that could have doubled as kennels for exorbitant rates from the few places that happened to have their shutters half up - notably these establishments sported bewildered looking tourists outside swearing after a hastily disappearing taxi. Therefore we trudged around Hanoi for the best part of 2 1/2 hours before finding somewhere to stay.

After a power nap, we decided that the best part of Hanoi to see next would be the road out, so we hastily booked a 2 night trip to Halong Bay (where they end up in the Top Gear special).

That turned out to be a fantastic experience with stunning views of the bay, cruising around on a luxury junk boat.

No prizes for guessing which are my legs!!

We spent one night on the Junk Boat awakening on Halong Bay, and one on Monkey Island in a hut (with aircon!) awakening to a monkey fighting a dog outside our door! We had a really good time although we were partly stalked by some Australian Jehovah's Witnesses.

So, returning from Halong bay, brings me neatly to my last post regarding the rat (still with me..? Good) The next morning we flew to Hong Kong for 3 nights, and had a great time meeting up with Jim and Gareth. The picture below is taken on Lamma Island where they live, before the night out in LKF:

From HK, we took a flight to the Philippines, and the island of Cebu, where we have spent the past 10 days doing more relaxing and Scuba Diving. This morning we saw Thresher Sharks and Manta Rays! Fantastic diving! We don't have the pictures yet, but we will put them up either on facebook or here at some point.

We have a flight to Donsol tomorrow to search for whale sharks, and had better leave it at that considering the internet cafe actually closed 15 minutes ago and we're going for dinner and an early night having gotten up at 4.45 for a breakfast appointment with the aforementioned marine life.

Bye for now.

He's Not Rat, He's Siberian Hamster...

Just a very quick post to tell you about an experience I had this evening whilst investigating what we should have for dinner.

We were trying to do a cheap, authentic Vietnamese evening, for our last night in Hanoi (and Vietnam), so we had some 'bia hoi' (cheap draught beer) at 3,000 dong a glass (25,000 dong to the pound) and decided to investigate the adjacent noodle stand. As I went over to enquire what the dishes were, and how much, I saw a rat sneak up behind the woman, put his paws on the edge of a bowl of chili dip and lean in to have a taste!

Needless to say, we decided against street food tonight, and went to a restaurant instead!

I guess it's one of those where you had to see it, but it certainly tickled me. As a brief epilogue, as we left the stand, we saw the woman covering up what remained of her chili sauce with a newspaper.

More on our journey from Saigon up to Hanoi and beyond in a day or two when we are in a position to upload photos.

Next stop is a visit to Apple Technical Support on Lamma Island in Hong Kong - there may be beer involved there too.

Bye for Now.

R

Bangkok to Saigon

Hello All!

We've done quite a lot since our last post in Phuket, Thailand in rather a short amount of time too.

Right after we left you, we embarked on a 12 hour bus journey to Bangkok, largely uneventful really, except for the small matter of the air-con not functioning when we first got on the bus, even the Thais were complaining so it must have been bad! After about an hour sweltering in the heat, we pulled into another bus depot to change to a bus that had functioning A/C. The driver then (revenge for us complaining of the heat) set the A/C to Arctic mode for the remaining 11 hours of the journey.

In Bangkok, our main aim was to secure a Vietnamese visa, and just have a look round. We took a tuk-tuk round the main temple sights - below is the giant Buddha:


for 20 baht, we got taken to 3 temples (2 tailor's shops!) and then dropped off at the water taxi for our trip to the Vietnamese embassy.

We also visited Bangkok's state of the art malls where on the 3rd floor, I found this:


Not one of those cars available in a prize draw, but a full showroom! Answers on a postcard as to how they got them upstairs.

From Bangkok, we took a bus to the Cambodian border, and from there a taxi to Siem Reap, the launch point for our trip to the world famous Angkor temples. Also the home of Angkor beer. A snip at 30p!


From Siem Reap, we had our own tuk-tuk to take us round the temples for the day. We started from our hotel at 5am in order to catch sunrise over one of the impressive man-made lakes. This particular one was 900 years old!


After the sunrise, the temples beckoned! We went round four main temples, some housed within walls the size of cities, so as you'll imagine, there was a lot to see. The highlights were the trees of the Ta Prohm temple, made famous from the Tomb Raider movie, it really is an awesome sight to see 40ft trees growing straight out of buildings, and the roots are just as impressive:


From Ta Prohm, we went to the huge city of Angkor Tom, some of which was completely collapsed, and some of which was really well preserved such as the carved faces from stone:

Our last stop of the day was the main attraction of Angkor Wat itself. This is the largest religious monument in the world, with big towers, and minute inscriptions and bas-relifs (pictures carved in stone to you and me!) all around. It was a truely magnificent sight.


After a full day at the temples, we returned to Siem Reap and booked our journey to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh is, to put it mildly, not the nicest city in the world, and the people aren't the kindest either. However, when you consider what the nation went through 35 years ago, it is more than understandable.

Here we went to the S.21 museum, a former school turned concentration camp for enemies of the Khmer Rouge where the harsh reality of Cambodia's history was brought to light.

The next day we took another bus to Ho Chi Minh City - formerly Saigon. What a difference! This is a city that has had its own share of problems in the past, but still manages to convey a friendly, lively atmosphere. The first thing you notice is bikes, millions of them! As I'm sure you all learned from Top Gear, cars are very expensive in Vietnam, and therefore most people choose to get around by motorbike/moped or pedal bike. This makes for a real spectacle as the riders weave dangerously in and out of one another, dice with death on the wrong way down one way streets to save riding another block, and generally tear-up the rule book on safe driving!


And by night, it's the same:


This all makes crossing the road like running the gauntlet, as there is never a break in the traffic. Ever. You simply have to walk out, keep a steady pace and let them weave around you. The only thing you/they stop for are buses and taxis, the rule here seems to be that the bigger vehicle has right of way. Whenever.

Thankfully, we survived several road crossings, and even two near misses caused by people riding mopeds down the pavement simply because the road was a little congested!

While we were in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a trip to the Meekong delta, where we traveled through the mud canals using the locals' mode of transport, saw handicrafts being made and I tried a shot of Snake Wine!


Yesterday, we went to the Cu Chi tunnels where the Viet Cong hid out whilst fighting the Americans. We had an enthusiastic veteran as a tour guide, who fought with the US Army, and he told us the whole story of the tunnels and how they were used against the American forces.

We also got the chance to go through the tunnels, which, even though they have been widened to fit westerners in (103cm tall by 80cm wide) were still a really tight squeeze. We managed 30m crawling before enough was enough!

We also saw the sniper holes that were used, and these were tiny:


We really enjoyed our brief time in Saigon, but last night headed for the station to catch the 11pm train to Nha Trang, a beach resort 6 1/2 hours north of Ho Chi Minh, where we plan to do more diving - can you see a theme occuring here??

Phuket - our best bits are underwater

After a gruelling 11 hour journey from Penang by minibus, and being held up at the Thai border by the weirdo hippy guy on our bus in a rainbow outfit and dredlocks being questioned, we finally arrived in Phuket. We stayed in Karon Beach in a beachfront hotel. The beach is gorgeous but the place is quite touristy. Practically everyone was western and quite a difference from our experience in the jungle of Borneo!

Our main reason for coming here was for the scuba diving. As luck would have it we stumbled upon a great dive centre - Sharkey Scuba where we got our own guide for all the dives - Oui - and personal friendly service throughout.

Us in our new dive masks:We did 4 dives around Phuket and 2 around Koh Phi Phi. They were amazing and we saw tons of great stuff. We have gone a bit overboard on the photos below, but it was so fab.

Stingray:

Loads of Durban dancing shrimp: (look at their cute faces! - who would ever have thought shrimp had a face like that)

A banded boxer shrimp:

Our highlight - seeing a few leopard sharks resting in the sand:

(look how close we are!! We got about 1 foot away - they are vegetarians though)

A little sea horse (about 2cm):

We also saw other types of sharks, a turtle and loads more. We would have loved to stay longer, but lots more places to see.

Apart from scuba, we also did an island tour to visit the famous island where James Bond was filmed (Man with the golden gun) and bits of shopping. Now off tonight on the overnight bus 12hours to Bangkok - not looking foward to it!

Penang - food capital of Asia

After the basics of the jungle we got a coach to Kota Kinabalu - capital city of Borneo -where we finally had a much needed shower (after 3 days of no running water) and a proper bed - heaven! Luckily for us, white water rafting was finally re-opened following previous days of the river flooding and a dutch girl and I screamed our way down huge rapids, while the boys did all the paddling.

After a few days in KK, we flew to Penang, Malaysia to be pampered by my family - Aunts, Uncles and lots of cousins. Somehow, we had managed to time our visit with the end of chinese new year, and a Hindu religious festival where there were processions where the men pierced their cheeks with arrows, and backs with hooks as part of a pilgramage - Eeeek!

We were taken on private tours of the whole island - visiting the heritage sites - where since the old colonial building is protected - hotels and offices are just built behind it.

also chinese temples and a really cool Klan building which is owned by a rich chinese/malaysian family. We were also shown all the best eating spots. Richard's reputation for eating spicy food was tested as we tried delicious laksa, indian curries, malaysian curries and thai curries - and albeit it, red faced and with sweat pouring off him, he passed!! :) It was great to see family that I had not seen for many many years, and we really enjoyed our time there. (Thanks to everyone for your hospitality)

Leeches, Crocs and Primates

No ladies and gents, we're not in the Printworks on a Saturday night, we've been to the jungle!!

After leaving Semporna (the nasty town with unreliable cash machines) where we got back from diving, we travelled north to the town of Sandakan which was to be the springboard for our foray into the Borneo jungle. We eased ourselves in lightly with a trip to Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, where you get to see the orangutans feeding twice daily.

It was amazing to see them swing in on the ropes provided, in fact, they looked almost human!!

After the feeding we attempted to walk the nature trail, but as it's rainy season here in Borneo, the paths were flooded and we didn't have closed shoes on. We tried, but only got about 10m in before we had to turn back. We then watched a video for about 40 mins on the work of the centre, which was actually really good to see.

After the video, I looked down at my feet (shoes had to be left at the door) to see a leech sucking on one of my toes!!! In my version of the story the leech was about 4 inches long and drained a pint of blood out of me. In Caroline's version (reality) it was about 7mm long and probably to 1-2ml. Still a scary experience as the little sucker wouldn't come off!!

After the trauma of being 'leeched' it was then time for our real jungle experience - Uncle Tan's!!

Uncle Tan's is the real jungle experience, we had 3 days and 2 nights living deep in the jungle sleeping in open huts on the floor with only a mozzie net for protection! It was basic to say the least with no running water (just the croc infested river) and electricity for only 3 or 4 hours a day, but we had a great time and got to see orangutans in the wild as well as the probiscus monkey, (only found in Borneo) a crocodile and various bird species.

The camp was run by around 25 of the most enthusiastic 17-25yr olds we have ever seen, who all loved the jungle and its nature. They also loved to play guitar and sing 24/7!!

After we had emerged from the jungle, we took a 6 hour bus to the capital of Malaysioan Borneo, Kota Kinabalu (KK) where we stay until Sunday when we fly to Penang. There is still lots to do as we're white water rafting tomorrow then searching out the Poring hot springs Friday and Saturday.

Sorry no photos on this blog yet - the computer we're on is so bad, I can't even get the photos off, so we'll update this post as soon as we can with pics from the jungle.

TTFN, R&C

Ten Days In

Hello, and welcome to our first real post on our travel blog!

Well, we have had a busy and exciting week and barely stopped til now. After a very long trek across the globe to Malaysia via Dubai, we finally reached KL. We met up with our relatives for some eating..more eating..and a bit more eating - anyone that knows Caroline's malaysian family will be able to see exactly what we mean by this! ...grabbing a bite to eat on the way to lunch, and then again after lunch, and then again on the way to dinner......
There was also a bit of being eaten where we had a Top Gear style massage and little fish nibble at your feet - sooo ticklish.


Then we headed to Borneo - Sipidan island for some amazing diving. We stayed in a wooden shack thing on stilts on a small island in the middle of the sea, with gorgeous views of clear blue sea and crabs crawling up the steps.

Sipidan is supposedly one of the best spots around the world for scuba - it definitely lived up to its reputation. Got to dive with lots of sharks and huge turtles, and tons of huge fish (Naomi and Tai you MUST come here!!!). Its was so hot that we could barely bear to walk outside for 20mins. Was a small friendly place and when we left, the dive masters serenaded us as we left the resort.



Tomorrow we are heading off to the Orangutan sanctuary and to the jungle to spot some elephants and monkeys, and hopefully avoid the leeches.

Short post for now as we're tired out from humping our backpacks around in the 35 degree heat trying to get money out of the only cash machine in the whole town- as were the other 40 people in front of us in the queue!

11 Days to Go!

Welcome to our Travel Blog!

Well, it's eleven days to go until we set off on our 15 week adventure through South East Asia and China en route to our new home in Australia.

Over the next few weeks, we'll try to document our travels with photos (when we work out how to do it!) here so you can keep in touch.

Click on the link to the right to subscribe so you'll get an email when we update, but until then, bye for now.

Richard and Caroline.